First, from Mike Head at wsws.org June 12, 2018: ‘Demands grow that Australian government act to free Julian Assange’
Head writes that last Sunday one of Assange’s attorneys, Australian Jennifer Robinson, was on channel 7’s ‘Sunrise Weekend’ giving a 10-minute interview. He called it a significant break from the long media silence in Australian media on Assange’s seven year detention in the Ecuadorian Embassy. Robbins had apparently issued a clear message to the Aussie government to carry out its responsibility to an Aussie citizen and give him his freedom.
I’d tried, but failed, to find the interview both on youtube and on Channel 7’s site. He writes that her challenge came as an international movement to fight for the freedom of the courageous journalist who has done more for transparency regarding war crimes, mass surveillance, and regime change operations around the world. Now I’ll offer here that at their site, you’re able to see in the middle column just how hard the world wide socialists have been working to build that global movement. Back to Mike Head:
“One of the central demands of this campaign is that Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull’s government act immediately to secure Assange’s freedom and his right to return to Australia, with guaranteed protection from any US request for his extradition on conspiracy and espionage charges. These charges can carry the death penalty.
Robinson’s interview came three days after she accompanied two Australian consular officials to meet with Assange inside the Ecuadorian embassy in London, where he sought political asylum on June 19, 2012. The visit was the first made by Australian officials to the Australian citizen in the six years since he has been effectively imprisoned inside the embassy, denied the right to obtain medical treatment or sunlight and outdoor physical exercise.
In her “Sunrise” interview, Robinson posed the pressing question: “What diplomatic representation is the Australian government willing to provide to protect Julian Assange from the risk of US extradition?”
Robinson pointed out that the Trump administration had taken “a far more public and aggressive stance” against WikiLeaks and Assange than even the Obama administration, under which a Grand Jury indictment was made for Assange’s arrest.
Since Trump’s election, Robinson explained, key members of his administration had called for WikiLeaks to be “taken down,” and for ways to be found to prosecute Assange, regardless of the US Constitution’s First Amendment guaranteeing free speech.
“When will the Australian government, which is uniquely placed to provide a resolution to this case, step forward to provide assistance?” she asked.
Robinson said Assange was willing to “face British justice, but not the risk of US injustice.” He is prepared to face court for breaching his British bail conditions when Ecuador granted him political asylum, but must have a guarantee against extradition to the US.
Such a guarantee was “standard procedure,” Robinson said. “If the Australian government would come to the fore, the case could be resolved quickly.”
As Robinson emphasised, both US Attorney General Jeff Sessions and CIA Director Mike Pompeo, now secretary of state, had made clear their intent to imprison Assange and shut down WikiLeaks, which Pompeo last year described as a “hostile non-state intelligence service.”
He goes on to say that threats against Assange escalated after the organization has released CIA Vault 7 documents which demonstrated massive capabilities to hack, covertly [and extraordinarily illegally and unconstitutionally, of course], surveil, and conduct cyber-warfare against US and planetary citizens.
“As the WSWS reported at the time, the documents indicate that the CIA has developed “more than a thousand hacking systems, trojans, viruses and other ‘weaponized’ malware” allowing it to seize control of devices, including Apple iPhones, Google’s Android operating system and devices running Microsoft Windows. By hacking these devices, the CIA can also intercept information before it is encrypted on social media platforms such as WhatsApp, Signal, Telegram, Weibo, Confide and Cloackman.”
He then reminds readers that Assange was further silenced on March 28, being allowed no communication with the world outside his virtual prisoners, no visitors save for legal counsel, and then steers us to an op-ed at New Matilda by human rights activist and attorney Kellie Trantor, which I did find: ‘Pressure Builds On Australian Government To Act On Assange Stalemate’, Kellie Tranter, June 12, newmatilda.com
Head brings the pithiest parts:
“She detailed documents, obtained by freedom of information requests, showing that Australian Foreign Minister Julie Bishop had refused to “seek to ‘resolve’ Mr Assange’s case.” Bishop’s refusal followed the February 2016 findings of the United Nations Working Group on Arbitrary Detention (WGAD) that Assange was being arbitrarily detained by Britain and Sweden in violation of international human rights law.
On February 12, 2016 Bishop, a former lawyer, signed a Ministerial Submission stating “we are unable to intervene in the due process of another country’s court proceedings or legal matters, and we have full confidence in the UK and Swedish judicial system.”
Tranter disclosed two further statements from Bishop’s department, on June 7 and 8 this year, adhering to the refusal to act on the WGAD verdict, even though in May 2017 Sweden finally dropped its trumped-up “investigation” into the sexual assault allegations against Assange. Among the exposures made of the politically motivated and dubious character of these allegations was a detailed examination undertaken by the Australian Broadcasting Corporation’s “Four Corners” program on July 23, 2012 (see: “Sex, Lies and Julian Assange”). [<if you click the arrow under the video you can read the transcript.]
…and that given Sweden’s having dropped all charges against Assange, he’d be glad to answer the remaining, relatively minor, bail-jumping charges while in Australia. He adds:
“As a legal analysis published yesterday by the WSWS explained, both international and Australian law establishes that the Australian government clearly has the “discretion”—that is, the power—to take action against the United Kingdom in order to protect Assange, including, potentially, legal action in the British courts.”
and
“On May 28, the WSWS and the International Committee of the Fourth International called for international action to defend Assange and endorsed the vigil being prepared by WikiLeaks’ supporters outside the Ecuadorian embassy in London on June 19, and other vigils being organised around the globe.
In the same statement, the Socialist Equality Party (Australia), with the support of journalist and film-maker John Pilger, announced a demonstration to be held at Sydney Town Hall Square on Sunday, June 17 at 1:00 p.m. The rally will demand that the Turnbull government honour its responsibilities to Assange and intervene to secure his right to return to Australia, with guaranteed protection from any US extradition request.”
From his hyperlink to 5/282018 above:
“We urge all defenders of WikiLeaks and of democratic rights to circulate information about the June 17 demonstration as widely as possible. Organisations that endorse and intend to participate in the demonstration should inform the SEP (Australia) at sep@sep.org.au. Endorsements will be published on the WSWS beginning tomorrow.”
I did manage to up solidarity vigils scheduled so far…around the globe here at classconscious.org; there may be other sites, but on these Twitter hashtags scheduled events in some locales are featured: #FreeAssange! and #Unity4Assange.
Now the title of this diary comes from ‘The Eerie Silence Surrounding the Assange Case’, June 9, 2018, consortiumnews.org, Dennis Berstein interviews John Pilger
By way of a teaser; Bernstein opens with:
“In a recent communication between Randy Credico, an Assange supporter, comic and radio producer, and Adam Schiff, the ranking member on the House Judiciary Committee, Assange’s fear of arrest and extradition to the US was confirmed by the leader of the Russia-gate frenzy.
Credico received the following response from Schiff after meeting the Congressman’s staff, in which Credico was trying to connect Assange with Schiff: “Our committee would be willing to interview Assange when he is in U.S. Custody and not before.”
Dennis Bernstein spoke with John Pilger, a close friend and supporter of Assange on May 29. The interview began with the statement Bernstein delivered for Pilger at the Left Forum last weekend in New York on a panel devoted to Assange entitled, “Russia-gate and WikiLeaks”.
But jeezum crow; I just found the Robinson interview on…WikiLeaks’ Twitter account. I’ll embed it in comments.
(cross-posted at caucus99percent.com)
davidly
Greyson Smythe
LeMoyne
juliania2
ohiobarbarian
stephenadavis1
wendyedavis
café babylon 
the jennifer robinson interview:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Two_witnesses
it is kind of hard to grasp how quickly these assholes in big media tossed Assange under the bus. there is already an iron curtain over information people can receive b/c Big Brother snaps his fingers & the English press from New Zealand to New York start marching in lockstep and to an extent the press in other countries as well. intro new search algorithms, get rid of net neutrality and voila, we may not even hear about the next Assange b/c he’ll already have been digitally disappeared.
be safe Wendy!
thick-wit here; run down the metaphor for me, please?
but i suppose we should be amazed by the epic zeal to disappear him, but having covered soooo many of the hits on him here…i guess i’m jaded by now. the cnn one (wasn’t it?) was a bit of an aberration, and i still haven’t figured out their actual motives.sorry, i am so knackered after a tiring day, and kinda depressed by smoke and fire reminding me of when we’d been evacuated however many years ago. we’re safe enough from these fires, but some evacuees from the durango area are even here in our town, not many motels, though. three wee ones?
sorry ugh. been busy and at the moment not feeling tip top ship shape.
I just think it’s interesting that in the vision of the end of the age seen by the blind, boiled seer of Patmos, there will be testimony, evidence, voices, witnesses, against or illuminating the BS going on. all the earth-shaking & thunder-rattling and all that is a metaphor for the power of the light of truth. being killed & dragged thru streets and all that might refer to defamation, slander, not simply the beast’s (the evil empire’s) run of the mill death & dismemberment plan reserved for us usual suspects. Maybe. the number two I take to mean simply “sufficient:” out of the mouth of two or three witnesses, etc. there will be enough people, “witnesses,” in the “public square” that people won’t have an excuse for swallowing the lies of imperialism. Some of these witnesses the principalities & powers & rulers of the wickedness of this present darkness (h/t Paul) will very publicly try to “kill & drag thru the streets.” for all who are watching to see.
clearly I pick & choose what to take more literally & what to take more metaphorically, allegorically, well, about everything I read, but certainly the KJV of Revelation that I read so many times as a kid. I read it, now, with a very anti-imperialist, anti-war set of lenses. all the chimaeric animals that appear, incl the last one, “the beast from the sea,” are symbols of empires & imperialism. they are inhuman. “the whore of Babylon” is religion in the service of imperialism, etc., etc.
any questions?
“the spider is in even king’s palaces.” Proverbs ??:?? there are bugs even in the oval office. bearing witness. lol.
lol, thanks for the explanation; given it, it sounds like a perfect allegory for the bringer of light and truth: julian assange. your image of dragging him thru the streets is remarkably apt, as well. wsws has a bit of coverage from sydney, thankfully. as i was in the twitterverse trying to make any discoveries, the related hashtags were goin’ bonkers with close to: danger danger, retweet massively…but w/ no content.
http://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2018/06/18/asvd-j18.html
i did manage to find john pilger on the steps, though; dunno if it’s in the wsws video. and the global vigils are pretty much scheduled for the 19, tomorrow, i guess, but what with time zones and all…
and a new op-ed by pilger published at…the new mathilda.
https://newmatilda.com/2018/06/18/bringing-julian-assange-home-john-pilger/
i’m so sorry to hear you’re feelin’ poorly; wish there were some way to help. bad food? well, shoot, livin’ as you are it could be any number of things, even weariness and depleted energy from constant fear and outrage, i reckon. i know all of us are sending you love, prayers, and good vibrations.
i’m out for the night. let this be our lullaby from the late, great john trudell. last thing he ever recorded before ‘his ride came for him’, as he’d said.
I’ll take a stab at your query, wendye, and suppose that j in oly is paying you the compliment of being the second witness, though I disagree with most of wiki’s commented interpretations as I don’t think the consideration of Saint John’s writing in and on Patmos should be considered prophecy, except in the broadest sense. I think that he, having been exiled not killed in the persecutions that arose following Christ’s crucifixion, (and that’s an interesting question in itself) getting news of that conflagration wrote his fiery poem in direct response to that destruction of the leaders of his church, and then if you agree with that interpretation, he is showing the underlying spiritual warfare accompanying that enormous event in his lifetime, and the two witnesses are Saint Peter and Saint Paul, called in church history ‘the pillars of the church’.
And indeed, a similar heroic figure for us is Julian Assange. I did go looking for another, (even though I think j in oly has a sound point) and spent my morning reading and thinking about an article at counterpunch on Robert F. Kennedy, but the article was halfhearted at best, didn’t even mention his great speech about what constitutes value in national terms.
Then, this evening I came upon an article by his son, Robert f. Kennedy Jr. that moved me to think he quietly might qualify, in his original work on cleaning up rivers (specifically the Hudson) but then too his questioning of the elimination of oversight represented by the non-regulation of vaccines.
This is an article from last Tuesday at commondreams.org, so you need to scroll into the “more” at the bottom of the righthand side column there. It is titled “Vaccines and the Liberal Mind.” And really I think that while not on our front burner as it were, this is one of the most important ‘calling outs’ I’ve read in some time. I wish it had had a more prominent viewing, and I don’t know what the answer can be for today’s parents, but it is truly horrifying that with some 50 vaccines now being mandated there is so little testing required and so much money being made.
It’s a really good article.
many thanks for all of this, juliania, although i’d thought he was referencing a wider allegory than me as a witness. i’ll read anew soon as i can, and hunt down the rfk, jr piece at common dreams. while still trying to answer comments at c99 on a couple threads, i’d hastily thrown together a new copy/past diary: bernhard at moa was right.
and i know i owe you and others emails but the time just goes me in a veritable flash. love ya, ww.
on morning edit: here it is, juliania. ‘Vaccines and the Liberal Mind’; Instead of demanding blue-ribbon safety science and encouraging honest, open and responsible debate on the science, too many online outlets are silencing critics and shutting down discussion on this key public health and civil rights issue by Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
he makes some great points about the lack of oversight, and brings a lot of related facts to bear, although numbers don’t always add up to causality. he lost me on ‘the liberal mind’, though, even as he’d made an attempt to justify its use. but is there a chance i could teach you how to bring and url (web address) so i don’t find myself spending so much time hunting something down? admittedly, i hadn’t followed your directions well, so i spent a stupid amount of time trying to search the site from its own flawed search engine. ‘scroll down to more’, ha, was a purdy big thing to miss. i’ll plea: tired at the end of a long and not much fun very smoky day.
on second morning edit: you’ll like seeing this if you hadn’t already.
I’m sorry – this new version of computing has me befuddled as I was so used to a mac. I will learn, or else at least try not bring references that are difficult to follow up on. With regard to ‘liberal mind’ I think Kennedy was taking to task the d party spokespersons who are ignoring the issue.
Thanks on the Nicky Hager bit – can you imagine a police search lasting 13 hours? I’m disappointed in thedailyblog though. All the host could do was spit venom, when obviously yes he’d been targeted as well, but for outsiders his dialectic is increasingly hard to follow.(But then, I had to give up on the Tristram Shandy as well. His first chapters were very good, but I lost him when he started in on a long epic about noses – I’m sure to 18th century readers it was all very sexy and funny but as it went on and on I finally gave up, returned the volume to the freebie spot.)
No worries on emails – what you do here is more than enough!
I should have suggested duckduckgo-ing the title of the piece and author – actually I got to it just now using only the title. Sorry.
noses??? lol. yeah, what a drag for nicky. is your new laptop windows then? i hope not touch screen; do you know what operating system? i just did a brief search for copy/paste instructions, but duh…of course you need to know that. i allus have a word document open to grab links, and often have several tabs open but minimized at the bottom when i create diaries.
the one i’m working on has been a major stinker as i can’t cross-post tweets to c99% without asking the site owner, and they come out huuuuge over there. ish. it’s an alternative poor peoples campaign led by…the poor and homeless. a smallish but doughty group, many in wheelchairs.
well i wonder why rfk, jr. believes the Ds wouldn’t ignore it all. guess he hasn’t twigged to D wall street, warmongers, etc. poor fellah. but the sheer number of childhood jabs is gruesome. some on his list may be the bill gates experimental kind, too, but that they’re in the ‘biologic’ category not ‘drug’ is sooo convenient. poisons in our foods are sorta categorized weirdly as well, but i’ve forgotten the differentiations.
thanks for being so easy about emails, i just start feeling so guilty about all the unanswered ones, and i don’t know how to type and they take so long to answer.
the remnants of hurricane ben out of the baja are supposed to come our way, maybe your way and bring some blessed rain…and lightning, but wouldn’t an inch or so of rain feel like heaven?
this could go on either of the last two threads, but: another magnificent truth-teller they’d tried to silence. from his bio tab at johntrudell.com, santee sioux leader of AIM for many years, occupier of alcatraz, at wounded knee in ’73 (?) a bit:
https://www.johntrudell.com/biography/
““On February 11, 1979 Trudell had burned an American flag during a demonstration in front of the J.Edgar Hoover building, the headquarters of the F.B.I. In Washington, DC, Trudell explained his motives for the flag-burning. “In the military, they said if the flag has been desecrated, the only way to properly dispose of it is to burn it. But they defined desecration of the flag as if it drops on the earth. I say injustice and racism and classism and your whole way of life desecrates whatever you say this thing’s supposed to mean.”
About 12 hours after the flag incident, in the early morning of Abraham Lincoln’s birthday, a fire “of suspicious origin” burned down Trudell’s home on the Shoshone Palute reservation in Nevada, killing Trudell’s wife, Tina, their three children and Tina’s mother. Not surprisingly, the F.B.I. declined to investigate, and the blaze was officially ruled an “accident.” But Trudell flatly stated “It was murder; they were murdered as an act of war.”
he eventually went on to turn that horrific poison into sublime medicine and more truth-telling. tonight’s lullaby: ‘rich man’s war’.
this is courtesy of travellerxxx over yonder at c99, aussie justice warrior for assange caitlin johnston’s ‘Why Bringing Assange Home Would Be The Best Possible Thing For Australia’. she turns ‘save assange’ on its head, of course, in the title, and while i’ve not been much of a fan of hers, i kiss her for this and might even use the dreaded ‘must read’ designation.
she tells the story of australia’s beginnings as a crown convict colony, the genocide of most of the aboriginals, my paraphrasing: the slow of the rest, and the short history of gough whitlam’s decolonization (the creation of an actual democracy) in the mid seventies. he paid for his crimes by way of a cia/mi6 coup in the end. but she notes that in those heady times she and julian were chirren, and both must have been intoxicated by the rebellion against the crown.
it really is a splendid piece, and i wish the new matilda would publish it. i reckon it’s on the #unity4assange twit account, so at least it will get read among the solidarity vigilists, but O, that it might be seen far more widely. the undercurrent (not spolier, methinks) is ‘australia could discover anew what it is, other than a US puppet w/ a crap gummint.
View at Medium.com
What about declaring the controversial January 26th public holiday in Australia “Wikileaks Day”?
i’d like it, jonstone sure would. ; )
For people living in Athens, Greece, or with contacts there: https://unity4jgr.wordpress.com/category/unity4j-english-section/news/
thanks for the page; it’s getting creepier, more fraught for julian. @wikileaks defense hannah jonasson) had tweeted this, but the docs had been in spanish. wsws read them:
i assume you’re in greece, epamaegina?
Yes, but the epamaegina address merely reflects the difficulty of deleting old wordpress links. The unity4jgr is the up-to-date contact identity.
i appreciate the explanation, and i’m dying too know your opinions on the current syriza politics afoot in greece, but i’m sure that as that’s beyond the purview of assange in danger, it would be impolite to ask.
best to you, and solidarity, epamaegina.
Wendy I can send you a text with info about the current situation in Greece, but it is an unpublished text and not for circulation. I can send it to you for your private use if you give me an e-mail. I am the translator, not the author. But I agree with the text and I have the author’s permission to send it to you. .
that would be great, and yes, i’ll keep it private unless and until it’s published. the most recent diary i’d written about tsipras/syriza was this:
‘Alexis Tsipras: Sell Out Comprador’, feb. 9, 2018
https://cafe-babylon.net/2018/02/09/alexis-tsipras-sell-out-comprador/
and i hope it doesn’t offend you. but the same big ‘leftist’ brand, noam chomsky, who’s featured in my current post here, is mentioned with yanis/ DieM as well. i’d had to look up her lat name, but wasn’t the fierce Zoi Konstantopoulou a thorn under alexis’s sadle blanket at the time?
https://cafe-babylon.net/2019/01/08/the-new-left-on-communism-socialism-totalitarian-fascism/
wendyedavis@msn.com
It doesn’t offend me and I agree with your critique of the politics both of Tsipras and of Chomsky. And our initiial discussions about organizing for the 26th January was with Zoi. She has been vague about whether she is going to continue to be involved since we started approaching SYRIZA people. But the fact is that Greece is facing elections and the New Democracy opposition has nothing to do with the alt right, which has some redeeming features. Both Varoufakis and Zoi, who are hostile towards each other, have a fierce profile but a fierce profile is not going to stop the idea-free centre right from winning the next elections in Greece. SYRIZA’s Macedonia policy also, which Zoi rejects, is good for Greece and FYROM, even if it seems to favour NATO.
you’d caught me out as to FRYOM, so i’d bingled, but the policy indeed favors nato according to tsipras via the national herald. but woe to that: nato and africom are the evil US empire writ large. but tsipras’s true colors are: sucking up to bibi, and calling himself a friend of trump. ah, well, they don’t need my approval, as i’m not an hellene.
i was trying to recall some of my earlier chiches w/ yanis (not including his alliance w/ jamie galbraith), but i did find this piece which did make me chuckle a bit:
‘Is Varoufakis Eurozone’s Trojan Horse in Greece’s Government?’
https://sputniknews.com/analysis/201507041024206753/
I think it is preferable to keep it simple and just say the things about the EU that Assange said in the video extract we inserted in the middle of the interview with our mayor.
do you mean that you’ll post it on wikileaks’ twit account or something? meanwhile, i’ll add more news at the end of the thread.
This was welcome:
I sent this to a friend who lives in Greece!! But unfortunately works in the US Embassy, and can[‘t get involved…but is is sending this to other people in Greece that she knows.
WH: That’s great. Thanks.
i’m so sorry to say that i’m not able to grasp your comment, epamaegina. and what’s WH? usually stands for white house in the states…
but what the hell WL retweeted this for is beyond me. trevor timm is no friend of wikileaks, and voted to kick them out of the freedom of the press foundation (anonymizing donations), as did the rest of the board: snowden, ellsberg, greenwald, cusack, et.al..
Sorry, WH are just my initials. I’ll have to read back over this whole thread to bring myself up to speed before saying any more. I was just pleased by the expression of support. I don’t think Wikileaks have anything to do with it.
i’m fine w/ waiting,, wh, but as to trevor timm’s abject fukkery (imo) wikileaks had retweeted it. although as is oft-noted: it’s the wikileaks team, not even necessarily the new editor, Kristinn Hrafnsson (in iceland, iirc).
This is what our mayor says about Julian Assange: (for English subtitles click under the picture) https://unity4jgr.wordpress.com/2018/11/10/%ce%bf-%ce%b4%ce%ae%ce%bc%ce%b1%cf%81%cf%87%ce%bf%cf%82-%ce%b4%ce%b7%ce%bc%ce%ae%cf%84%cf%81%ce%b9%ce%bf%cf%82-%ce%bc%ce%bf%cf%8d%cf%81%cf%84%ce%b6%ce%b7%cf%82-%ce%bc%ce%b9%ce%bb%ce%ac%ce%b5%ce%b9/
to say the truth, i couldn’t make out what the mayor was saying about assange, but maybe something was lost in translation? illargi must have been the interviewer, then? but i wish i could like varoufakis more. ;-)
via auomatic earth:
https://www.theautomaticearth.com/2019/01/debt-rattle-january-8-2019/
odd; i clicked in a cse. link or something at the bottom, and was taken to ilargi on assange.
http://main.cse-initiative.eu/?p=622
Ilargi hasn’t learned Greek. Varoufakis doesn’t need you or me to like him. So it goes. After thirteen years living in Australia though he would have/would have had more qualifications to help Assange more with the Australians and not just with the Ecuadorians.
no, varoufakis doesn’t need anyone to like him; his ego’s big enough to fill a stadium. ;-) glad you gave the neo komos link, this is what proves to me that pam (love her on assange) and varouFakeis are not friends of mine on this ‘alliance’: Yanis Varoufakis and Bernie Sanders announce alliance; The Former Greek FinMin and Senator Sanders (I-Vt.) to launch ‘Common Blueprint for an International New Deal’.
Neos Kosmos is a Greek–Australian newspaper, publishing in both Greek and English. https://neoskosmos.com/en/125259/pamela-anderson-endorses-varoufakis-initiative/
WikiLeaks’ Assange should surrender to UK rather than stay at embassy indefinitely – Ecuador FM’, 11 Jan, 2019
“The UK will never let Julian Assange just leave the country, so he should surrender, Ecuador’s foreign minister said. The only other option is life self-imprisonment at the Ecuadoran embassy.
“Mr. Assange has basically two options: to stay indefinitely because the British authorities have told us … that they will never authorize a safe passage for him to leave the embassy to a third country, and the other alternative is to surrender,” Foreign Minister José Valencia FM Mundo.
While securing safety assurances from the British side would be ideal, “you cannot continue insisting on something that will not happen,” Valencia stressed, noting that Ecuador believes that it will be “most positive” for Assange to leave the diplomatic compound and face the British law – and by extension a possible extradition to the US.”, etc.
https://www.rt.com/news/448548-assange-ecuador-leave-embassy/
Unlike the British, the Ecuadorians are obviously ashamed simply to apply naked violence in this case, in defiance of law and every canon of elementary decency. To condemn them would be misplaced moral indignation, though Mr. Valencia could perhaps find a way to avoid speaking for the British. Let them do their dirty work for themselves. And as for the Australian government!!!
but do remember that in the meantime, the ecuadorians are conducting their ‘special investigation’ of julian’s having been given status as an ecuadorian citizenship…oh, what a bloody mess.
That Assange was forced to rely on the Ecuadorians in the first place is a disgrace. DiEM25, of which Julian is a founding member, has defended him only in the context of his asylum there. Unfortunately. Look at this video of Varoufakis speaking to what was then DiEM25’s local group in Aegina. He mentions Julian.
In the video Yanis says that he will be supportive of the Aegina group, which is after all on his home territory. But this is something he has not done and the group has now disintegrated (for related but differrent reasons). It was in any case only coincidental that Yanis became available to speak at this meeting. Some of us ran into him by chance at the local cinema and invited him to the DiEM25 local meeting, which was programmed for the next day. On the subject of January 26th, Varoufakis has been exposed to the idea of taking inititiative in relation to Australia’s national day: http://main.cse-initiative.eu/?p=483 The idea was not linked to Assange, something which is entirely my fault because not being a television viewer I missed all the media flap about Wikileaks and Assange when it was at its height. In any case, all the links from the video just mentioned are worth following up. In any case, DiEM25 has made a mess of such opportunities as existed for implantation in Greece, and probably elsewhere in Europe. It seems that Varoufakis’ primary objective from the beginning has been to get into the European Parliament but it is not something he declared openly from the beginning. I hope that he succeeds in doing this, and this is a hope that is shared by many others who agree that DiEM25 has been a disaster at the level of popular politics. Perhaps we will be given a new opportunity now with the Yellow Vests. Let us hope so
By the way this BBC interview https://www.yanisvaroufakis.eu/2019/01/12/mrs-merkels-athens-visit-her-fall-from-grace-and-greeces-demand-for-war-reparations-on-bbc-radio-4/ will be seen as something positive both in Greece and in Germany, by everyone other than the diehards on both sides. This is Varoufakis at his best.
“…so far there is no sign this has caught his (yanis’s) imagination. well, wikipedia hadn’t mentioned assange as a founder of diem25, but i did find this in which he says he’d helped a bit on creating their manifesto. my stars, he remembers key histories, nationalism from r2p libya, and the bits about the EU trade rep for tpp and tisa.
yes, i admired yanis’s calling out the EU for its xenophobic nationalism.
i’ll add this from cassadra fairbanks, haven’t had tie to read it yet. iirc, she ha provided translations of a couple leaked spanish language documents, but at any rate i remember going to the gateway pundit website a couple times.
https://diem25.org/ap As you see here, Julian is a member of DiEM25’s Advisory Panel. Early last year, before Julian was rendered incommunicado there were numerous objections from DiEM25 members to his presence on the Advisory Panel. They demanded a survey of members’ opinion. Varoufakis was opposed to Julian’s exclusion from the Advisory Panel but after considerable delay it was put the vote and it turns out that around 20 percent of the DiEM25 membership wanted him excluded. So he is “still there”. It doesn’t matter that Varoufakis has been, or has seemed, uninterested in defending Julian as a fellow-Australian. It did seem to matter once, but others have come along who can do the job, so Yanis is free to focus on what he wants to do, and does well.
i do see, and good on varoufakis. but as to two of the others on the advisory panel: naomi kleins doesn’t criticize capitalism, she criticizes ‘unfettered capitalism, but also is a major critic along with the god of ‘the left’, glenn greenwald, owner of the snowden nsa files. (i’ll dig that outta my files later, but as to ‘rape-jokey at ‘the left forum’: Žižek:
‘The Spontaneous Politics of the Masses: Slavoj Žižek and the Yellow Vests’, Boris Kagarlitsky, jan 7, 2018, counterpunch; he ‘critiques/deconstruct the rt video i’d ignored at rt earlier. (not my kind of faux intellectual)
https://www.counterpunch.org/2019/01/07/the-spontaneous-politics-of-the-masses-slavoj-zizek-and-the-yellow-vests/
Did you see the satire on Zizek and others among the links from the 26th January and Aegina article at CSE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y1OnDgBNlRU? We had a public meeting on Naomi Klein in Athens with a screening of her film “This changes everything”, and following discussion, which we videoed. Some of us are still fans of hers of course, but we have yet to see how she and her co-thinkers are going to handle the growing revolt against wind-turbines. They brought down the Prime Minister in Australia. China has now said it is not going to install any more unless they are economically competitive with conventional power generation. The Poles have said they are phasing them out, demolishing the ones that have already been built. Etc. etc.
that was great! zizek plucking his dirty shirt a ever, la garde as a Dominatrix! ay yi yi! thanks. well, i ain’t a fan of ‘this changes nothing’ as the wrong kin of green collective calls it.
but i did dig out (hopefully for your edifciation and enjoyment: ‘The Great WikiLeaks Train Robbery: Pinkerton Police Greenwald and Klein in Close Pursuit, café babylon, oct. 2016
obviously staged ahead of time, and pfffft on both of them. the ‘good whistleblower v. the bad whistleblower (guess who’s who?)
but i think i’ll put up a new assange diary w/ the things i’ve brought over the last day or two so i can cross-post it over yonder at c99%. maybe tomorrow. hope you read the CP fellow critiquing zizek’s video, and grabbed the archived link on assange for later reading/exposing.
I put the Greenwald/Klein discussion up at the FreeDiEM25 facebook group and thanks for it. Without your comments because they represent your viewpoint and as much as I agree with it, we are (still) part of DiEM25 and our critique is internal critique. I might be presumptuous here because I have no official standing at that forum, but at least some of the moderators will agree, in my estimation.
that’s fine, it’s just a transcript, after all. wouldda thunk unity4j rather than diem, but there may be cross-over intersections in any event.
iirc, it was tarzie at the rancid honey trap who’d called their scripted conversation ‘dumb and dumber’. ;-)
Thank you for drawing my attention to this 2012 Australian Broadcasting Commission programme https://www.abc.net.au/4corners/sex-lies-and-julian-assange/4156420?fbclid=IwAR0Z5pMK5FuO5-y-UskOaHg0Rxs1J3vpOb5QLpisu_0ApdRbKZ81G3Lyu6o
We will certainly do what we can to get it known in Greece.
There is a 2016 article that sheds light on issues that might have confused viewers of the ABC programme, namely the relations between the two women and the order in which they appeared on the scene.
https://observer.com/2016/02/exclusive-new-docs-throw-doubt-on-julian-assange-rape-charges-in-stockholm/?fbclid=IwAR1utnLEN7htKGQzEOek-GbMBUI0m9IZ5wRFufhxmTbmlgroMx4Jr3vDRY0
oh, bother; i’d seen your comment via email, and tried to find the WL page that deconstructs the fake case against assange. dagnabbit, i spent half an hour, and still couldn’t find it. it’s a step by step deconstruction, then additional support decrees, calumnies, etc. i’ll do some chores then see if i can remember where the hell it is. ; )
ha; i found it. several tabs in the yellow bar. but i’d pinged that wikileaks and julian’s most famous detractor (mueller investigation central,marcy wheeler) had reported on ‘141 things assange reporters shouldn’t say about him, and finally dug it outta the wayback archives.
https://web.archive.org/web/20190107163136/https://defend.wikileaks.org/about-julian/
but you might want to check on the right sidebar here under Categories, scroll
down almost to the bottom for ‘wikileaks and other leaks’. might be stuff you hadn’t seen before.
thanks, wh (amigo or amiga?). i just posted a new assange plight diary, and when i cross-post it, i’lll try to remember to include the petition, but iirc i have before. ”d signed up for phillip adams’ emails, and he does alert subscribers as to numbers delivered.
oh, and i have a couple gilets jaunes links for you when i can manage to hunt them down again.
https://cafe-babylon.net/2019/01/18/january-additions-to-julian-assanges-extreme-plight/
This was the Australia Day function on Assange. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QKS2PXmSTfA&feature=youtu.be&fbclid=IwAR1AI5qaldmmxLur0EhWMCGj_mrAY8_bnY1ESSqfZPaxJE9iaDuEpiTNXSA
The commentary is in Greek. The videos are in English, including the one at the end with Phillip Adams. There are glitches but some of them will be fixed in the overall English-subtitled version to be put online soon.
Here is some cocktail party gossip, conveyed to me by my dentist. In the year 2000 then ambassador Nicholas Burns https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/R._Nicholas_Burns told a Greek audience that Greece’s political future would revolve around two politicians, Alexis Tsipras and Makis Voridis. Tsipras at that time was a youthful street agitator. Voridis nationalistic far right. But Voridis went on to involve himself with “conspiracy theory” subjects, so bye-bye for him. But congratulations to Burns for his perspicacity with Tsipras.
i’ll try to answer when i have the time, but i’ve been trying to catch up answering comments on my new diary cross-posted at c99%, and i keep having to look up things…i’ve forgotten in my dotage.
thanks, unity4j; consortium news has it, too, and three of the very few comments said it was crap sound, hard to hear, etc. there was a kerfuffle over the terms ‘hacker’, whistleblower’ i didn’t quite get.
https://consortiumnews.com/2019/02/14/watch-live-from-sydney-whistle-blowing-wikileaks-and-the-future-of-democracy/
no way i could spend two hours listening, but wsws has the cliffs notes, helpfully.
https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2019/02/15/syds-f15.html
as well as the dates for the march 3 and 10 rallies in australia…
https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2019/01/25/demo-j25.html
best to you and yours on aegina island.
Don’t be put off by the Greek. The interview is in English: http://aeginalight.gr/article.php?id=98331
thanks, same former MP with the plan! i’ll watch later when i can make the time, right now i actually have somme comments to answer over yonder on my new Bomb Iran warsaw meeting.
but goddam, here we go again, and wikileaks has answered it already, but the disinfo in this is insane:
‘Roger Stone: Mueller discloses evidence Trump adviser communicated with Wikileaks; Stone says evidence is ‘innocuous Twitter direct messages’ that prove ‘absolutely nothing’, the guardian (no author claimed, not even luke harding…)
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2019/feb/15/roger-stone-judge-issues-gag-order-on-trump-confidant-in-criminal-case
lauria kinda prompted him to bring his plans again, but the money quote was about the aussie government being a puppet of the usa thus ramping up psyops where amerika would need to defend the nation.
good guy, is kevin. thanks.
Tribute to Julian Assange. 26.1.2019 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eT_kdXFhvRs&feature=youtu.be&fbclid=IwAR1rQqIYPNXVIFyas0eIjaBGwYj_-DqPSfciyU9ma-ZbIjsPRElhNc_1eU8 You can access English subtitles by clicking the rectangle under the picture,
thanks, U4J, and i know it’s hard to understand, but i can’t even imagine having an extra block of time to watch something so long. heh, it took me two days to find the time to watch the former ambassador’s 16 minute one. but i will try to cover the march 3 and march 10 evets in australia, ord willin’ and the creek don’t rise.
hope you and yours and doing okay.
We are fine, and I am fine, apart from a cold that doesn’t want to go away, but the same cannot be said for Julian Assange. The lack of official response in Australia may be beginning to undermine the very resilient morale of Phillip Adams (Anagnostaras). He even gave a plug to Varoufakis, as you will have noticed if you watched Phillip’s part of the January 26th programme, but it may not be enough to wean YV from his Manichean parliamentary left vs right scenarios. Varoufakis and ambassador Kevin could be a powerful combination if they punched together, in my estimation, but we may be in a situation where never the twain shall meet. Can we expect help to come from the direction of Roger Stone? In Europe the Gilets Jaunes, or some of them, are at least trying to resist the left vs right Manicheanism. Is that enough to build on? Eastern Europeans are suckers for anti-Russianism but now there is an anti-EU sentiment that may be becoming nearly as strong. Is that going to help Julian, who is no Eurosceptic, bless his soul.
This is huge news! Full credit to Greg Barns – 2019 Nobel Peace Prize Nominee Julian Assange’s amazing Australian legal advisor – and all the Australians who have been supporting Julian relentlessly!! Julian Assange’s Australian passport has been renewed.
https://www.smh.com.au/politics/federal/julian-assange-gets-a-new-australian-passport-20190221-p50zek.html
credit to julie bishop as well, and jen robinson. and that is great news. oddly, wikileaks on twitter doesn’t have it.
dunno about stone; he’s kinda mucked it all up with his ego riffs claiming this and that w/ assange and communications behind the scene. now he’s been branded ‘a serial liar’, only assange can (and has) set the story straight once again, and he’s ‘a criminal’.
sorry your cold won’t leave. mr. wd sucks zinc lozenges for colds, and uses dilute grapefruit seed extract oil, as well, and thinks both help. it’s been blizzarding here, blessedly in this major drought area. the drifts are gorgeous! but plowing us out is tough for mr. wd with the winds being so strong and bitterly cold.
https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2019/feb/21/julian-assange-granted-new-passport-by-australia-a/ More information would be desirable on the reasons for Julie Bishop’s resignation.
dah, i kept looking for this in the w times piece: ‘More information would be desirable on the reasons for Julie Bishop’s resignation’, thinking they were asking the Q as a hit on bishop.
wifi and phones are still iffy today, it may account for my not being able to get this video to play. i’ll come back later and suggest a more recent assange diary to add more; this one’s getting too long, so comment bounce about when i try to access them,, okay?
yes, let’s go to this one instead, please: ‘January additions to Julian Assange’s extreme plight’, january 18